


some souls are bound together

by magisterequitum



Series: rather see you bare your soul [2]
Category: Psy-Changeling - Nalini Singh
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-13 02:51:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3364964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/pseuds/magisterequitum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And then 5 times with the Lauren Family and their daemons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	some souls are bound together

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't not do an entire 5x part with the Lauren family. So again just different snapshots and parts exploring the Laurens and their daemons and others with them.

**i. Judd and Brenna**

Brenna is an observant wolf. She’s a genius at her computronics, smarter than most at other things too, but as a younger sister she’s been trained at picking out details. For the longest time, it’d been the only way she could make sure she knew what had been going on. Her brothers were terrible at keeping secrets from her. 

As such it doesn’t take her long to realize there’s something up between Judd and his daemon. 

It’s not that she’s never seen daemons before. They had humans that had mated into SnowDancer. When she’d been on campus the university had been a mix of all three races. So she knows daemons well enough. What she does know is that daemons don’t stray far from their owners. They can’t. They’re not supposed to.

What Brenna also knows, or has noticed, is that doesn’t apply to her Psy and his daemon; even if Judd wanted to play whatever aloof game, she knows he’s her Psy. She’s not saying no. 

She’s seen the way the german shepherd isn’t glued to Judd’s hip. She’s seen how sometimes the daemon will slip into a room a bit after Judd’s already there. It’s all tiny stuff. Things no one would pay attention to unless they were looking at it. But she knows also that the other Lauren family members aren’t that way with their daemons. 

She debates saying anything about it. Daemons are intimate to their counterparts. Certain things about them are so very taboo to anyone who doesn’t have one, or even those that have their own. 

Her wolf wants to know though. She wants to know. And so she can’t help it when she asks one night while he’s standing guard and making sure nothing happens to her. 

Chewing on her lip, she turns in her chair to face him, “Your daemon doesn’t stay with you, does she?” 

Judd and daemon both go still. The brown of his eyes changes to black for a moment. His voice is utterly cool when he says, “What do you mean?” 

“She can go away from you. You don’t have a distance tether, like everyone else, do you?” Her hands still hold the datapad she’d been doing calculations on, but that’s far from her mind now. 

Psy and daemon alike don’t respond. Ears flick and tail curls around her hind legs, and the dog daemon tips her head up to look at her counterpart. 

“I’ve seen you without her,” Brenna says when they remain silent. If that confesses to her having been watching them, then so be it. 

Still nothing, and it’s then that she notices both Judd and his daemon are staring at one another. Just like how the Lauren family often did when talking telepathically. Another guess she can confirm now. “Are you two talking about me?” she asks, uncaring if she’s interrupting. 

“You’re very forward,” and the answer isn’t from Judd. It’s the first time she’s ever heard his daemon speak to her. Her voice is much higher than she’d have guessed. 

Both Brenna and her wolf blush. Perhaps they are, but so what. This man is theirs. “Is that bad?”

“No,” the german shepherd butts her head against Judd’s leg when he gives her a dark look. “We like it.” 

“You know what I am. What I was,” Judd says, taking over the conversation. 

“Yes,” Brenna nods. Her wolf curls up under her skin, suddenly wary of what is coming. 

“We were trained this way. All Arrows are. It makes us more effective.” Judd’s statement is delivered in an even tone. No anger bleeds through the words at what certainly had been horrifying torture to ensure that he and his daemon could be separated distances without pain. 

Anger certainly builds in her. She watches as Judd strokes a hand through his daemon’s fur, smoothing the fur around her neck where it’d slightly raised up. She could say sorry, but it would be nothing. 

Instead, she takes the admission of their secret with the trust it had been given in, and returns to her work. She can’t erase the past memories done to them but she can fight for better ones. It’ll be enough some day. 

 

 

**ii. Sienna and Hawke**

Safe and warm in their cabin the Pack had built for them, Hawke counts the steady drum of Sienna’s heart. He had almost lost her; the thought of a future without her scares wolf and man too much. 

Now, he holds her as she turns plays with the key returned around her neck with one hand and the edges of the opened, empty box with the other. Head resting against mussed deep red hair, he takes his eyes off his new mate to the sleeping blue mass in front of the laz-fire. 

Mazrim, wings relaxed across his scaled back, and tail curled around the length of him, has ignored them for some time. His mate’s daemon does that often now. Giving the two of them space at just the right times. 

Hawke can remember a time when the dragon, as long as Sienna’s arm from nose to tail tip, made his life as much hell as the woman he has wrapped in his arms. A hell he gladly would put up with again. But he does not miss the one time her daemon had dived straight at Hawke’s face for challenging their knowledge of Sienna’s abilities; he’d barely ducked getting a face full of sharp claws. 

“He’s fine,” Sienna murmurs, curled up against his chest. She tilts her head, trying to look up at him, but it’s hindered by his head on top of hers. She settles for kissing his jaw. 

“He is?” he asks, thinking of how when they’d all three dived under the lake, the daemon had rubbed his scaled face against Hawke’s cheek in comfort and sad goodbye. 

She hums, nodding. “Yes.” Something like humor colors the mating bond, and she smiles, a tiny quirk of her mouth he can feel on his skin. “He says we’re too loud, he’s tired.” 

His mate’s daemon is as arrogant as Hawke is. A fact Sienna has pointed out before. Stubborn and annoying, both of you, she’d said. 

He grabs Sienna’s hand where she’s stopped touching the key, twining their fingers together. He doesn’t want to stop touching her. His next question is one he’s always wondered but never asked. Now he can. “Is he the only one?” 

“A dragon?” At his nod, Sienna shrugs. “I’m not sure. I’ve never seen another one or heard of one. It’s certainly not a common form at all. We,” she hesitates, her fingers twitching against his. “We used to do it to try and seem bigger.” 

Fear and anger cloud the mating bond. He doesn’t need her to explain, not unless she wants to. He can figure out enough she’s talking about Ming. 

“I didn’t actually think he’d settle as it. But after my mother’s death he never changed again,” she continues and then falls silent.

Hawke squeezes her, hugging her closer. His wolf wants to rub its muzzle against her, comfort her grief. He lets all of his love for her crowd the mating bond. “Sienna.”

She twists and kisses his jaw again. Her cardinal gaze flickers with white starlight. Her smile is small, but true. Finally, she shrugs, “He just is. Marlee calls us a fairytale. She’s been reading those stories in her classes.” 

He grins. “You are very brave.” He lifts their joined hands so he can kiss her knuckles. “Brave and beautiful.” 

“Flatterer,” Sienna snorts, but the smile doesn’t disappear. A chirp from the laz-fire draws their attention, and one gold eye peers at them before the lids closes again. “He says you flatter.” 

“All true,” he says.

They don’t move for some time after that. The world can give them this. 

 

 

**iii. Walker and Lara**

Lara works late nights. As the den healer there’s always something for her to do. When someone doesn’t need her healing attention, there’s paperwork and inventory and many other things to take care of. It all means she sleeps irregular and sometimes not at all.

Which is why she drinks her coffee usually after dinner hours. It keeps her brain still going past midnight. 

The nearest place to her domain is a breakroom used by some of the senior rank members of the den. The packmates who teach the different age groups or oversee the den’s functions. The room’s got a coffee machine that’s always stocked. 

It’s here that she ducks into, and it’s here that she finds someone else is up past midnight like she is. 

Walker Lauren sits at one of the round tables, and when she walks in his head raises to look at her. 

She pauses, her fingers twitching at her side, wolf going still. It’s not like she’s not met the Psy her pack has taken in. She has. She’s tended his family, his daughter and niece and nephew, when they’d gotten sick. Just allergies, their bodies adjusting to living outside Psy conditions. 

“Oh,” Lara says, “I’m sorry. I just wanted some caffeine.” 

Steady green eyes from an unmoving face watch her where she hovers just inside the doorway. She can see he has his own cup, a datapad set out in front of him. She knows Hawke had given him the task of being a mentor and teacher to one of the age groups in the den. Maybe he too preferred to do his work here at this time. 

“That is alright. You did not interrupt.” Carefully measured words, and his eyes flick over her once before returning his attention to the datapad. 

It’s then she notices the tiny bird standing on one corner of the pad’s screen. His daemon. A small little finch that could fit in Lara’s palm so little she is. The den gossips daily on the Lauren’s family’s daemons, so unused to these new ones outside of the human members they have. She’s seen his brother’s, the giant dog, and Sienna’s dragon that coils its tail around her neck and perches on her shoulder. Walker Lauren is no less impressive than his other family members, but his daemon is so tiny in comparison. 

Shaking her head, Lara tells herself not to waste time on idle thoughts. She’ll be as bad as the rest of the gossiping packmates. Besides, she’s certain this Psy doesn’t want any company. 

She takes her coffee without another word, but as she leaves she notices the thumb that strokes that tiny feathered head. Gentle and soft. 

Lara tells herself not to think on that either. 

 

 

**iv. Marlee and Ben**

“He copies your Uncle.” 

Marlee’s foot stops the ball Ben’s kicked at her, her head snapping up. The braid her father had plaited this morning’s coming undone due to their playing, the loose strands sticking to her face. 

They’re in the White Zone, playing after morning classes. A simple game of kicking the ball back and forth. In between them, her daemon jumps in and out, trying to get the ball away. 

Ben’s statement is innocent, but it still makes her flush. She knows her cheeks are turning pink, a thing she’d never known she could do before they came to live here. She watches as Bryce’s legs trip him up. 

Today, as many other days since they came here, he’s taken the form of her Uncle Judd’s daemon. Only Bryce isn’t as tall, isn’t as large, as her uncle’s daemon. Bryce looks like a puppy form of the big tan and brown dog. 

It’s this form or a rabbit that Bryce takes to most. The rabbit had been their favorite after they’d left their _before_ home. Soft fur and a fast heartbeat, she’d held him close to her and felt better. Then, in the den, so new, copying her uncle had made them feel better. 

Marlee nudges the ball with her foot towards Bryce. With a delighted bark, he uses his muzzle to send it towards Ben. 

Chewing on her lip, she debates telling Ben. She’s not a baby, she’s too _old_ for being a baby and scared, no matter what her father tells her. But Ben is her friend. Ben makes her feel better too. “We feel safe,” she says, her voice quiet so only he can hear her. 

Bryce circles back and rubs his head against her legs. She reaches down and touches his fur. 

Ben cocks his head, and though he’s even younger than she is, he answers in a way her father would say is too old for a child. Like how sometimes he tells her she doesn't have to be so still or serious or quiet. “My wolf makes me feel safe.” 

His wolf is his soul like Bryce is hers.

They don’t say anything else of it because Ben rolls the ball back, and Marlee has to beat Bryce to it, their game back in play. 

Later, Ben whispers when her father comes to get her for dinner that he gets it. Her Uncle Judd is scary. But cool. 

Marlee and Bryce agree. 

 

 

**v. Toby**

Toby has been watching the brightly colored moth daemon for several minutes. He’s in his weekly lesson with Sascha, but his attention has left him from the mental exercises to looking at the way her daemon’s wings twitch on her shoulder. They’re so brightly colored even the dim light of the den’s overhead simulation can’t make them less beautiful. 

Rhian nudges his hand where she sits on the table, her smooth head a reminder. 

“Was he always that bright?” he finally blurts out, the question coming out before he can stop to think. A flush heats his face, knowing he’s being invasive. 

Sascha straightens in her chair where she’d progressively leaned closer to him during their lesson. She tilts her head so she can look at her daemon from the corner of her eye. Her fingers stroke one wing. “Not always,” she says, the white stars flickering in her eyes. “Sometimes he would try and be dull.” 

Toby nods, thinking on how Rhian had tried to hide herself when they’d still been in the Net. His mother had told them to try. She’d been so afraid to lose him too after Sienna had been taken. 

“But,” Sascha continues, smiling, “It was too hard. He just wanted to be colorful. When he settled it was this.” She shrugs. “I only found out why later.” 

Toby’s empathic abilities are small, certainly much smaller compared to Sascha’s, but still his daemon gravitates towards being what many Psy would call too _showy_. “Rhian likes to be bright too,” he says, the admission a quiet one. 

Indeed, Rhian’s in her favorite turtle form, her shell covered in a bright red and yellow pattern. 

“Do you not like that?” she asks, frowning a bit. 

“No,” he says quickly, shaking his head. His hair’s getting too long again, and he wonders if Hawke will cut it for him like last time. “I just,” he pauses. He’s been wanting to ask this for several lessons, but unsure. “Is it okay?” 

Sascha exhales, but the smile returns. She reaches out and smooths his hair, at the same time reaching out psychically and soothing his apprehension and agitation with her abilities. “I think it hurts worse to hide it. I think it’s good to show it. It’s better.” 

He feels better, can breathe easier. “I think all empaths’ daemons want to be bright.” 

She nods, color flaring in her cardinal eyes, colors to match her daemon’s wings. “I think so too.” 

Rhian rubs her head against Toby’s hand, and he picks her up then, cradling her in his lap. She hasn’t settled yet, but he thinks it won’t be long. 

He thinks if she decides to be half as beautiful as Sascha’s it’ll be just fine.


End file.
